another collection of poignant, in your face, punch in the gut poetry from Amanda Lovelace. AL's poetry on abuse and neglect and co-depency read like another collection of poignant, in your face, punch in the gut poetry from Amanda Lovelace. AL's poetry on abuse and neglect and co-depency read like like stream of consciousness. She doesn't sugar coat her poetry and she spills the raw, harsh feelings that need to have been hushed and shushed far too long. And she does so in brief, crisp clear spurts she doesn't dwell on every thought, nor deliberate in long drawn out stanzas. I kept trying to savor each poem, and read it slowly, and then I realized that sometimes the poems worked better to just keep reading several pages, they all work with each other as if it was a novel cut into stanzas. It was taking me well over 4 months to read this book when I finally realized that. I'm gonna try reading her next book like I would a novel. I had hoped I was gonna finish the book last night and make it my last book of 2022, but I somehow kept procastinating. So now it's the first book of 2023 which I think is actually perfect because one of my top New Years goals [I make goals not resolutions] is to write more. And I find AL's poetry always refreshing to the point and inspiring. ...more